166 ARCHITECTURE

are to be found in every considerable town in Southern
India, but the wealthy English-educated Indian of the
present day, despising his own art, affects a style of house
devoid of any kind of architectural distinction, which is a
more or less bad copy of Anglo-Indian buildings. There
is, however, a reaction of feeling among the more enlightened
Indians against a slavish imitation of European fashions,
which may eventually lead to a new style of Indian
domestic architecture being founded on the basis of the
old by an intelligent adaptation of the living Indian craft
traditions to the needs and habits of modern life.

The hill fortresses scattered over many South Indian
districts are interesting memorials of medieval and later
times, when rival Hindu dynasties were fighting against
each other, or resisting the Musalman invaders from the
north, or when British, French, Dutch, and Portuguese,
were struggling for supremacy in India. But, though
some are considerable in size, none of them are to be
compared as architecture with similar military works in
Northern India. Several of the Hindu temples, like those
at Tanjore and Vellore, both of which are distinguished by
very fine architectural sculpture, are enclosed by fortifica-
tions, which have been the scene of eventful struggles in
the history of British India, but these too are insignificant
as architecture.

CHAPTER XVII
HISTORY
THE sequence of events, commencing with the first
arrival of the Portuguese, which led up to the supremacy
of the British, and the constitution of the Madras Presi-
dency and Mysore in their present form, is briefly set out